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DBS Bank India has expanded its bancassurance partnerships with two new partners in Tata AIA Life and Birla Sun Life in addition to Aviva India Life.
With this move, Singapore-heaquartered DBS Bank has become the first bank in India to adopt a new open architecture model with three life insurers on a single platform. This is expected to give its clients the freedom to choose using an analytics driven, intelligent and interactive process.
SINGLE PLATFORM
Elaborating on the development, a DBS Bank India spokesperson said: "the trend that we have set in this single platform approach is that across channels, across customer segments we will not differentiate".
"There will be no preferred partnerships or exclusive tie-ups. It's an open architecture that has gone live. As long as a product exists from these three insurance companies for a customer need, it will be offered for him (customer) to make a choice," the spokesperson added.
It may be recalled that the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) had in 2015 allowed corporate agents, including banks, to partner with up to three insurers in each of the segments of life, general and health. Prior to this, a bank could tie up with only one insurer in each of three segments.
"While the insurance regulator in 2015 increased the cap, many banks in India are still hesitant to opt for this. DBS Bank sees this as opportunity and hence this move to expand our strategic partnerships", said the DBS Bank India spokesperson.
While the induction of an additional two partners would expand insurance offerings for DBS Digibank customers (about 1 million), they will not be able to purchase the insurance products of these three insurance partners directly through the digital route. However, the relationship managers of DBS Bank India can engage with Digibank customers and help them exercise their choice of insurance products. To help arrive at a decision, an analytics driven online tool has been developed.
DIGIBANK PLATFORM
Meanwhile, DBS Bank India is working towards enhancing its offerings in the Digibank platform for insurance products. It is filing with the IRDA (under its e-commerce guidelines) to register its Digibank platform so that the bank can start putting the insurance products in this digital platform. The IRDA's e-commerce guidelines were issued in March this year.
Except for select digitally approved products, the insurance regulator IRDA does not allow customers to buy complex products directly through the online channel.
However, in recent times, IRDA has been moving fast to make the insurance buying process more smooth and digitised and adding more product classes into the allowed list.
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